


MIA

by delires



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 23:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delires/pseuds/delires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eames disappears without a trace, Arthur is left questioning whether his partner ever existed at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	MIA

The dream is bright and airy, slow-paced, coolly-lit. They have lately been experimenting with calm environments, working under a hypothesis that a calm dream will keep projections mellow for a longer period of time. If higher levels of calm were maintained, greater changes in the dream’s fabric could occur without the projections noticing and ripping the dreamers to shreds. So far, the results have been favourable.

When Eames turns to Arthur, his face is all soft at the edges, as though someone had smeared Vaseline over the lens.

“We’ll split then,” Eames says. “I’ll meet you at the centre, see how you get on.”

Arthur nods.

There is a second hypothesis, which they are only just beginning to test: that dreaming with loved ones also extends the length of time before projections turn, because a loved one is able to move more safely through a subject’s subconscious.

“Alright,” Arthur says. “I’ll try to think loving thoughts.” He watches a pair of Eames’s projections drift past with barely a glance in his direction.

They are already standing very close, so it is easy for Eames to reach out both hands to Arthur’s face and pull him in for a slow kiss. H

“Is that supposed to help?” Arthur says, as Eames steps away again.  

“Can’t hurt,” Eames smiles. Then, he slides his hands into his pockets and strolls easily away.

Arthur heads in the opposite direction, as discussed.

*

Arthur wakes to a dark, thundery afternoon and turns his head to look at the other side of the bed. Eames had not been waiting for him at the centre of their maze, and now there is nothing beside Arthur but empty space and the loose end of an unattached I.V. line.

Arthur pulls his own line free and gets up slowly, then walks around the hotel room, taking stock. Eames’s jacket is gone from the back of the desk chair, and his suitcase is no longer tucked underneath the bed. The scrap of medicinal tape still stuck to the end of the second I.V. line is the only sign that Eames has been here at all.

Arthur does not understand. He rolls his die, to check he is definitely awake.

*

Arthur does not panic. He is not worried yet. Mostly, he just feels pissed off.

He calls Eames’s cell phone and hears an electronic voice informing him that, “The number you have dialled has not been recognised,” which is total bullshit, because Arthur has been calling this number for years.

The next thing he does is get on a plane to London and head to the house in Hampstead, which is where he and Eames had planned to go next. When Arthur reaches the house, his front door key won’t turn in the lock, so he climbs the fence and drops down into the backyard, where he smashes a window pane with his elbow and hauls himself through.

To find Eames here, hiding behind a set of fresh locks, would have been a long shot, but Arthur certainly had not expected to find the apartment empty of everything including furniture. There are geometric shadows on the walls, where the bureaus and picture frames have been. The place still smells of Eames, of tobacco and Jean Paul Gaultier, but all of the kitchen surfaces are covered in dust. It is clear that nobody has been here in months.

Arthur never stays in hotels in London, because he has a home here, but since Eames has taken it upon himself to remove the bed from their house, Arthur is not left with much choice.

He takes the tube all the way to Victoria, and checks into Eames’s country club. They still have Arthur’s alias on register, though claim to have no record of H. Wotton, which is the name Eames has always used here for himself. This makes no sense at all, because Arthur has only ever been here as Eames’s guest. Arthur never bothered to sit the interview to become a full member of the club himself.

Upstairs, in an expensive room with aging decor, Arthur tries Eames’s phone again, rolls his die again, and then goes over every detail of the last four days again.

And again.

And again.

These are the facts: Arthur and Eames have been together for two years, since just after they performed inception on a man called Fischer (though they have known each other for much longer). Officially, they split their time between London and Los Angeles (they share a home in each), but really they spend most of their lives away from both of these places.

Two months ago, they stopped taking jobs. It was meant to be a vacation of sorts, which gave them the opportunity to experiment a little.

Four days ago, on November 1st, they went under together to test some casual theories. When Arthur woke up, Eames had vanished without a trace.

Nothing about the dream had been unusual. They had done nothing heavy, nothing dangerous, nothing like...

*

Arthur goes to Cobb, because he is not sure what else to do, and because Arthur needs to see somebody who can reassure him that the man he loves has not just been a figment of his imagination all along.

“It’s as if he never even existed,” Arthur says, as he and Cobb sit together at Cobb’s kitchen table, clutching mugs of coffee.

“As if who never even existed?” Cobb says, with an almost straight face.

Arthur just stares at him and then Cobb’s eyes go a little wide, like he’s surprised at himself. He reaches halfway across the table, a bumbling gesture, as if reaching to take Arthur’s hand.

“Sorry. That wasn’t funny. I don’t know why I thought that jokes would be- I don’t know why I said that,” Cobb stammers.

Arthur rubs both of his hands over his face and feels the scratch of stubble against his palms.

“I think I should get some sleep,” Arthur says. He pushes himself up from the table with a screech of chair legs against tile. “I couldn’t get a wink on the plane.”

*

People cannot disappear from right under Arthur’s nose. He is too clever with tracing information and keeping tabs on things. Nobody could hide their trail from him completely. Unless, of course, the person in question knows Arthur well enough to be able to duck beneath all of his tricks and systems. In the past, Arthur has always been careful not to let anyone get to know him quite that well, but perhaps he has slipped up with Eames.  

As the days creep past, Arthur’s whole world begins to feel like liquid; it runs right through his fingers when he tries to hold on. Cobb becomes the only thing which is constant and stable, so Arthur tries to stay anchored to him and dreads the day when even Cobb will start to lose his solidity. 

“Sometimes criminals need to disappear, Arthur,” Cobb tells him one evening, as he leans one shoulder against the refrigerator and looks Arthur over with a careful, clinical eye. Arthur is sitting on top of one of the kitchen counters, legs dangling. He pulled himself up here while he was waiting for the kettle to boil, but that was almost twenty minutes ago and he has yet to move.

“Not without telling me,” Arthur says.

“Perhaps he had a good reason. You helped me to disappear for months.”

“I would have helped him too.”

“You don’t know the circumstances.”

When Arthur does not say anything else, Cobb sighs. He moves across the kitchen and coaxes Arthur down from the counter with an insistent hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t know what I can say,” Cobb says, wrapping his arms around Arthur, hugging him.

Arthur stands rigid. The feel of Cobb’s body folding around him is all wrong. Everything is too narrow and long. Arthur closes his eyes against it.    

“You’re nothing but muscle and bone,” Cobb says, pulling back. “I’m going to get some some carbs in you.”

“I don’t need carbs,” Arthur says, as Cobb starts clattering around near the stove.

“What shape of pasta do you like? Spirals or bows?”

Cobb doesn’t wait for Arthur to answer. He pulls a jar from the cupboard and starts to tip rattling shapes into a saucepan, and Arthur cannot help noticing the way that Cobb’s hands shake a little as he does this.

*

Of course, the most logical explanation is that Cobb is nervous about what Eames’s disappearance might mean. Cobb knows better than most the tricks that a mind can play. Anyone who has lost a loved one to sickness has every right to feel nervous when familiar symptoms begin to manifest in somebody else.

This is what Arthur’s logic tells him.

Yet, there is a small part of Arthur’s brain, that switches on at night just as he is falling asleep, which says otherwise. After all, don’t people get nervous when they have something to hide? Don’t people get nervous when they know something they shouldn’t? Don’t people get nervous when they do not want to be found out?

*

Arthur dreams.

In the dream, Cobb’s office is much larger than it is in reality and there is a huge combination lock on the door, a dial, like an old-fashioned safe. Luckily, Cobb trusts Arthur entirely too much, so Arthur has the combination and getting through the door is no problem. Neither is the password to Cobb’s laptop, nor the login details of his email account. Arthur knows all of these things.

He scrolls through the emails in Cobb’s inbox, passing over the ones from himself, the unopened ones from Mal, until Arthur finds what he is looking for, an email received November 1st from an H. Wotton.

“Gotcha,” Arthur mutters, and opens the email.

There are no pleasantries. The message consists of just four words:

_Keep him for me._

*

When Arthur wakes up, his mouth is dry, so he slips out of bed and heads towards the kitchen, intending to fetch himself a glass of water. Instead, he finds himself in Cobb’s darkened office, opening up Cobb’s laptop. Arthur’s fingers hover over the keys, as the screen lights up. He already knows exactly what to type.

He is scanning the addresses listed in Cobb’s inbox, when a voice behind him makes him turn.

“Arthur. What are you doing?”

Cobb is standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light behind him. He is wearing a dressing gown and holds a mug in one hand. He is looking right at Arthur.

Arthur inhales sharply, so that his nostrils flare. _I’m on to you_ , Arthur thinks and narrows his eyes so that Cobb can see him thinking it.

“Nothing,” Arthur says, closing the laptop with a decisive ‘clunk’.

*

In the next dream, Arthur is on a beach. There are large flat rocks, rubbed smooth by the waves, hot with sunlight. Arthur is sitting on one of them, staring at the crumpled towel beside him and trying to work out where Eames has gone; he was here just a minute ago.

Arthur gets up to look.

Further down the beach, there are strange oblongs sticking up out of the sand. The farther Arthur walks, the taller the oblongs get, until they become great, towering bookcases rooted into the beach.

Arthur recognises one of them as the bookcase from Cobb’s living room and Eames is standing in front of it, a book open in his hands. The relief Arthur feels at the sight of him is so strong that it makes his stomach ache. He walks up behind Eames and presses his mouth to Eames’s bare shoulder, which tastes salty, like the sea.  

“I missed you,” Arthur says.

Eames chuckles. It is a quiet sound, almost swallowed by the crashing waves.

“Whatever for?”

“Because you weren’t there.”

Eames turns around and looks at Arthur affectionately.

“But I’m always here. I’m your Id. You can’t get rid of me,” he says. “By the way, I’ve left you something. In the books.”

Arthur tries to take the book out of Eames’s hands, but Eames holds it away, out of reach.

“What did you leave?” Arthur asks.

“It’s in the books,” Eames says, teasing. “You’re smart. You can figure it out for yourself.”

*

Searching through an entire bookcase is not an easy task, especially when you are not quite sure what you are looking for. Arthur yanks open book covers and flicks frantically through pages, his search growing more and more urgent, as though he is on the clock and running out of time to find what he is looking for before the kick. Arthur does not realise that he has begun to throw the books, sending hardbacks clattering violently across the room, until he feels strong hands gripping his shoulders, spinning him around, yanking him away from the shelves. Arthur jerks and tries to fight for a moment, before the face of his assailant snaps into sharp focus before his eyes. Cobb is staring at him. Arthur is breathing hard, his chest rising and falling as though he has been running. 

“Hey,” Cobb says, “What the hell are you doing? I’ve got children in this house. You’re going to scare them.”

Cobb’s eyes are wide and anxious, but kind, maybe even a little pitying. Now Arthur can hear the sound of James crying from the next room, which makes him feel more fully awake than he has done in days. He swallows and lets the book in his hand fall to the floor with a thud.  

“I think I need to go away from here,” Arthur croaks, voice rusty. Cobb shakes his head. His fingers tighten around Arthur’s shoulders in a way that Arthur does not appreciate.

Cobb says, “Not a chance. I’m not letting you out of my sight while you’re like this.”

And all at once, everything slips again.

“Why?” Arthur snaps.

“What?”

“Who asked you not to let me out of your sight?”

“Nobody, Arthur. I’m worried about you.”

Arthur thinks about the email he found. _Keep him for me_. Is that what is happening? Is Arthur being kept to suit a purpose? Why else would Cobb be quite so attentive, so concerned to derail Arthur’s search?

“Arthur,” Cobb says, urgently, as though he has said it more than once, trying to get Arthur’s attention. “Stop this. You’re behaving like Mal was before she...”

Arthur says, “If this was how Mal felt, then she had every right to jump.”

“Don’t take Mal as an example,” Cobb says, stern, and Arthur shakes his head.

“No, I couldn’t. I’m not brave enough.”

“You aren’t _lost enough_. Mal wasn’t brave, Arthur. She just got lost.”

Cobb hugs him again, fiercely. Arthur squirms against the hold but this only makes Cobb cling tighter. A hug can give no comfort when it feels all out of shape. Arthur cannot bear the feel of Cobb’s arms around him, but he does not have the energy to free himself completely. Instead, he forces his arms up between his body and Cobb’s and presses the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, until he can see swirling, glowing patterns.

All Arthur wants is for Cobb to let go, but Cobb holds onto him for a very long time.

*

Later, as Arthur helps Cobb to clear up the scattered books, the edge of a scrap of paper which is poking out from between pages catches Arthur’s eye. The book is a hardback copy of _The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works_ of Sigmund Freud,in French translation. Arthur picks it up and flips to the place where there is a faded yellow post-it note.

The note reads: _Thought you might find this interesting._

The handwriting does not look like Eames’s, but that doesn’t mean a thing. After all, Eames’s handwriting rarely looks the same. Arthur is not yet sure what the note might mean, but he takes the book back to the guestroom and tucks it away under the mattress, just in case.

*

Eames has been gone for around six weeks when Arthur first begins to think that the connection between a loaded die and a poker chip is perhaps too great to be mere coincidence.

He sits cross-legged on the floor of Cobb’s guestroom and goes over the facts.

Arthur has checked all of his usual sources. There is no record of Eames’s existence, besides a few old messages in Arthur’s phone, sent from a number which no longer exists. There is no clue that Eames was ever alive, besides Arthur’s memories of him – the familiar smells, an idea of how Eames’s body fit against his own, a vague image of a crooked smile.

Theoretically, there is nothing which Arthur could not have concocted all by himself.

Arthur rolls his die again and again, across the cover of the Freud, and shakes his head in disbelief when it always lands reality side up.

*

Eames is fucking him with long, slow strokes.

Arthur’s whole body feels syrupy warm and he is panting. The muscles in his arms bulge taut as he pushes himself backwards to meet Eames’s thrusts. It feels familiar. The bedclothes are from the bed in their Los Angeles apartment, the weight of the body behind him is right, the full stretch deep inside, the smell of fresh sweat, all right. The graze of stubble against the side of Arthur’s neck is right, as Eames leans forwards to murmur his name.

It is this which is wrong. It is in the sound of the two ‘r’s, which aren’t quite how Eames would pronounce them. They hit just shy of Eames’s softness.

In an instant, Arthur has thrown the body away from him and climbed off the bed.

He backs up until his shoulder blades collide with a wall. The man on the bed is already turning, standing up. He looks like Eames, but he is fully clothed now, dressed in a sharp suit which Arthur quickly recognises as one of his own, last season’s Burberry. The real Eames could never fit into something tailored for Arthur’s body.

“What’s wrong?”

The voice coming out of Eames’s mouth is not Eames’s. It is Arthur’s voice, but the accent is English, Arthur doing an English accent and not quite succeeding.

When they had first started sleeping together, Eames used to play around with his forgery in dreams sometimes. Arthur never really liked it, then. Now, as this vision of Eames prowls forwards and his face melts into a reflection of Arthur’s own, his movements growing clipped and careful in perfect mimicry, Arthur likes it even less.

“Stop it,” Arthur says. His breath catches in his throat at the sight of his approaching mirror-image.

“Why,” his own voice answers him. “This is how it always is.”

The doppelganger steps closer, pressing the length of his body into Arthur’s. He runs a hand up Arthur’s side, from hip to ribcage, his fingers dragging over the bare skin. There is the brush of a starched shirt-cuff and the scratch of Arthur’s wristwatch, which is buckled around this other Arthur’s wrist. When the projection leans in and seals his mouth over Arthur’s, his kiss is hard, commanding, exactly the way that Arthur kisses when he is trying to make a point. Being on the receiving end makes Arthur’s head spin, and without thinking he opens his mouth up to the taste of his own tongue, and reaches hesitant fingers to the back of his own neck.

As if in answer to this, the weight against him grows slightly heavier. The angle of the kiss changes, so that Arthur’s chin is tilted up, because the person kissing him has shifted to become taller.

In reality, Arthur and Cobb are almost of a height, but this Cobb is a whole head taller than Arthur and looms over him, leaving Arthur feeling hopelessly trapped, even as they break apart for air. Instinctively, Arthur lifts a hand to push Cobb back, to fight his way free, but Cobb catches his wrist and slams it hard against the wall, catching the other wrist too, before Arthur even tries to raise it. Cobb shakes him.

“What the hell is the matter with you? Get a hold of yourself, asshole,” Cobb says, but the voice is Arthur’s again. And when Arthur looks closer, he sees that the eyes staring at him are not blue, but are brown, like his own.

In the background, over Cobb’s shoulder, Arthur sees a body fall past the window. He knows it is Eames’s. He lurches against Cobb, struck with a desperate urge to cross the room and throw himself through the glass after it, but Cobb holds him back with iron strength.

“No,” Cobb says, in his own voice now. “You’ll get lost out there in the wind.” He dips his head to nuzzle at Arthur’s collarbone, a soft ticklish movement which is completely at odds with the painful grip he has on Arthur’s wrists. “I’m to keep you here.”

Arthur feels light-headed, unable to breathe properly, his heart beating rabbit-fast, and this is how he wakes, gasping, sweating, clutching at the sheets. 

_It’s all me_ , Arthur thinks. _I made it all. And I am the Ego. So that makes Cobb..._

*

Arthur plans his escape very carefully.

The front door makes a distinctive noise, and Cobb is a light sleeper, so Arthur forgoes that route. Instead, he waits until he is sure that everyone will be asleep and then opens his window silently. The guestroom is only one story above the ground, so Arthur lowers himself over the window ledge, clinging on with his fingertips, before he drops down to land in a neat crouch. Arthur crosses the damp grass of the lawn, and climbs into Cobb’s car, which is sitting in the drive. He puts the keys into the ignition and backs the car out. He does all of this quickly rather than quietly, because the sound the engine makes will undoubtedly wake Cobb and bring him running outside. It’s unavoidable. But by the time Cobb reaches the front door, Arthur will be gone in a screech of tires.

Arthur drives too fast all the way across town to their apartment. The roads are unusually quiet.

The Los Angeles apartment has not been emptied of furniture, like the London house has, but most of the stuff here belonged to Arthur in the first place. Since arriving in LA, Arthur has already checked this place for clues more than once, and he knows that there is nothing here of interest. He is not here for that. Arthur is only here to get into the safe, to select one of the forged passports they keep. It has to be a name which Cobb has not heard before, one he would not instantly recognise from boarding lists. It is very important that Arthur not be found too quickly.

Arthur does not switch on any lights. The moonlight spilling through the bedroom windows allows him to see well enough to tap in the code and he has a flashlight he can use to study the passports.

It is all going according to plan.

Then, just as Arthur is reaching a hand inside the safe, he feels two hands curl around his hips. Arthur freezes. He has not heard a sound. This is the first he knows of there being somebody else in the room, which strikes him as incredibly odd.  

Eames wraps his arms around Arthur from behind, pressing his mouth to the side of Arthur’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” Eames whispers there. “A thousand times. I’m sorry I had to go away. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

Arthur lets out a long breath, feeling his body deflate. He allows his head to loll back against Eames’s shoulder. Their muscles seem to fit together exactly as Arthur imagined they would. Eames’s breath is hot and real against the back of Arthur’s ear. His fingers tighten possessively, a little desperately, digging hard into Arthur’s muscles and Arthur can’t remember if that is right. He can’t remember if this is the way that he dreamed Eames to be.

“Darling,” Eames says. He sounds worried. He tries to get Arthur to turn around and look at him. But Arthur does not want to look. He is too busy staring at the die sitting on his open palm, afraid to toss it, unable to remember how it is supposed to land.

 


End file.
